Bayport, in that day, was not only by the sea, it was of the sea. The sea winds blew over it, the sea air smelled salty in its highways and byways, its male citizens--most of them--walked with a sea roll, and upon the tables and whatnots of their closed and shuttered "front parlors" or in their cupboards or closets were laquered cabinets, and whales' teeth, and alabaster images, and carved chessmen and curious shells and scented fans and heaven knows what, brought from heaven knows where, but all brought in sailing ships over one or more of the seas of the world. The average better class house in Bayport was an odd combination of home and museum, the rear two-thirds the home section and the remaining third, that nearest the road, the museum. Bayport front parlors looked like museums, and generally smelled like them.
To a stranger from, let us say, the middle west, the village then must have seemed a queer little community dozing upon its rolling hills and by its white beaches, a community where the women had, most of them, traveled far and seen many strange things and places, but who seldom talked of them, preferring to chat concerning the minister's wife's new bonnet; and whose men folk, appearing at long intervals from remote parts of the world, spoke of the port side of a cow and compared the three-sided clock tower of the new town hall with the peak of Teneriffe on a foggy morning.
All this, odd as it may have seemed to visitors from inland, were but matters of course to Sears Kendrick. To him there was nothing strange in the deep sea atmosphere of his native town. It had been there ever since he knew it, he fondly imagined--being as poor a prophet as most of us--that it would always be. And, as he sat there in the Macomber yard, his thoughts were busy, not with Bayport's past or future, but with his own, and neither retrospect nor forecast was cheerful. He could see little behind him except the mistakes he had made, and before him--not even the opportunity to make more.
Overhead, amid the cherry branches, the bees buzzed and the robins chirped. From the kitchen window came the click of dishes as Mrs. Macomber washed and wiped them. Around the curve of the road by the meeting-house came Dr. Sheldon's old horse, drawing Dr. Sheldon's antiquated chaise, with the doctor himself leaning back comfortably upon its worn cushions. Captain Kendrick, not being in the mood for a chat just then even with as good a friend as his physician, made no move, and the old chaise and its occupant passed by and disappeared around the next curve. Sarah-Mary and Edgar and Bemis noisily trooped out of the house and started for school. Edgar was enthusiastically carolling a ditty which was then popular among Bayport juvenility. It was reminiscent of a recent presidential campaign.
